Annie Besant

Annie Besant was a British socialist, theosophist, women’s rights activist, writer and orator and supporter of Irish and Indian self-rule.

In 1867, Annie at age 20, married Frank Besant, a clergyman, and they had two children, but Annie’s increasingly anti-religious views led to a legal separation in 1873.

She then became a prominent speaker for the National Secular Society (NSS) and writer and a close friend of Charles Brad laugh. In 1877 they were prosecuted for publishing a book by birth control campaigner Charles Knowlton. The scandal made them famous, and Brad laugh was elected M.P. for Northampton in 1880.